Is packet loss a hot topic?

Is it just me, or is the subject of packet loss coming up in more conversations at the bar, on the bus, and in the office?  I just came across some promotional material from Silver Peak and I was flabbergasted (a good thing) to see that packet loss is the prominent and recurring theme.  (Search for Silver peak and packet loss.  You’ll see what I mean.) It makes me wonder where Silver Peak has been all this time.  If not packet loss, the single most vexxing problem for packet switched networks engineers, what pressing problems have they and their competitors been solving?  But the answer to that question isn’t that important.   It doesn’t really matter where Silver Peak and Riverbed and Bluecoat have been .  It’s the here and now that matters and Silver Peak is finally in the here and now with their acknowledgement that of packet loss is the most damaging threat to realtime network applications.  Finally.

This is good for IPeak Networks: more talk about packet loss means more people are understanding that when you solve the problem you can get truly super quality out of a lossy network.  But for network users (which means just about everybody) there is a downside to the Silver Peak message because they are talking about tackling the packet loss problem with FEC; a fifty-year-old answer conceived before anyone had imagined packet switched networks.  Surely we understand by now that FEC as we know it doesn’t work in a realtime network application scenario.  FEC as we know it adds latency, the mortal enemy of realtime apps.  And we certainly understand that a network that can’t support realtime applications is a thing of seriously diminished value.

By now you know that the only solution for the packet loss problem that does support realtime apps is IPQ from my company, IPeak Networks.  The fact is, IPQ is the only true innovation in protection against packet loss since 1960 when Messrs Reed and Solomon put forward their notion of forward error correction.  (You’ll say that’s a long time to wait for an innovation.  True, but it’s the here and now that matters, right?)

And don’t take my word for it.  I can visit and show you.   IPQ will add quality to a lossy network (and remember that ALL networks are lossy to some extent.)  I can do it right before your eyes.  Better yet, I’ll give you the wheel and you can drive the demonstration.

I’ll wait for your call.